Bell Tech 386 SysVr3

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <465 at sp7040.UUCP> jsp at sp7040.UUCP (John Peters) writes:
| In article <25145 at ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, jsilva at cogsci.berkeley.edu (John Silva) writes:
| > How does Bell Technologies 386 based SysVr3 stack up to SCO?  It seems to have
| > everything, but I am really unsure as to it's reliability.  Is it stable?
	We have a few copies, and we're unsure of its reliability, too.
	The serial ports still seem to take a lot of CPU, and lose data
	at higher baud rates.
| > Do all the utilities work as they should?  Is it really a 'complete UNIX'
| > as they advertise?

| 1.  SCO may have the "look and feel" of UNIX, but it is not UNIX and is not
                                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
	This is just blatently untrue. Xenix is based on AT&T code. It's
	not unmodified UNIX, however. The only vendor I know of for that
	is Bell Tech. MicroPort customizes theirs, as do Plexus, INter-
	active Systems, etc.

| 	at the level of System V Release 3.  
	This is true, however virtual memory has been added, which is
	the most visible to most users.

| 
| 2.  System V Release 3 has major enhancements of System V Release 2 and
| 	SCO Zenix has not come up to its level of diversity of tools.
| 
  Any user who needs RFS and streams will have to buy another product or
wait until November. Xenix has a lot of added stuff, and is generally
quite reliable and has a number of BSD enhancements, as well as cross
compile from 386 to Xenix/286, 8086 and DOS. Xenix has a lot of
utilities and tools not in SVR3 and vice versa. To imply that the lacks
are all in one direction is less than the whole truth.

  You have to consider the requirements and decide if you need
unmodified V.3 and its tools, or if you want to run SysV programs.
Xenix/386 passes SVID with the exception of one fairly obscure system
call, and will allow you to develop programs which run portably on SVR2
and SVR3. It won't run streams and RFS yet, and the compiler produces
code which is (generally) better than the pcc in untouched SsyV. The
386 SVR3 compiler would not compile about 30% of the programs I have
tested, generating code which crashed the assembler a suite which runs
on BSD, Ultrix, Xenix, SunOS, SVR3 on 3B2/200, etc.

  Being biased is fine with me, but supporting the bias with statements
which are false, or only part of the truth seems to be pretty useless to
the person who asked the question.

  I admit that I tested V/386, 386/ix and Xenix/386 and bought Xenix. I
did it based on reliability of the products as of 11 months ago, and I
have seen that the later versions of Xenix are still solid.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me